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After the UK Nationals a month ago Dylan and I sat down and had a chat about what we needed to do to really move the Rocket SSD (Solid State Deck) on. There were some prototypery related build issues with Rocket Raccoon and his boat was still a bare shell in build, so we had the opportunity to change a few things. While the boat was obviously fast with the higher wings and smoother shapes, there was definitely room for improvement.

The forward mast position was causing some problems lowriding in a chop, especially with the extra heft that the Raccoon was carrying, so we’ve moved the mast/deck/daggerboard aft a bit to improve the seaworthy-ness.
While for ages we had the benefit of bigger wand/foil spacing with a small sprit, the Exocet adding a full length bowsprit had made a noticeable catch-up so that was an easy add-on.
Then there was the diet. When you start with something so out of the field it’s really hard to know how to pitch things with material. Raccoon really was solid – actually the best place to start as we wouldn’t have learned anything if it had folded up on the first sail! Then it was just a question of looking at everything and seeing where little losses could be made. Thinner foam here and there, going a bit lighter on the skins, a bit less uni in the ‘I’ beams across the cockpit. It’s all added up nicely and ‘Stingray’, as she is now known, is much closer to the ballpark weight-wise.
It’s been a wild few months, as always a bit too hectic for me and my sailing has suffered – but coming out the other side we’ve come up with something that looks totally badass and is certainly the nicest Moth I’ve ever sailed. Hopefully Dylan can overcome the little tune-up time I’ve left him with and put in a good showing at the Europeans. The SSD Rocket will see production for anyone that wants one, while the high wings, revised geometry and long sprit will all transfer across to the version 3 Rocket for all new boats.
Would love to be out there watching and cheering on, but I’ve got a bit too happy with the grinder while fixing/dismantling Rocket Raccoon and have a long list of rebuild to crack on with. Better make the most – will be sailing again by Paignton GP!

Is that the right word?
Since the Nationals last year I managed to get to go sailing twice I think, once at Stone where I had finally got my head around everything and was back near the front, clinging onto the coattails of Rashley and Offer and even sneaking in a second overall. Then once at Draycote in apocalyptic conditions that saw my forestay snap, when the boat blew back upright after a capsize and as the boom was still in the water everything loaded up massively in the 30+ knots we had that day! The ensuing carnage saw a hole in the foredeck and a shredded tramp.
I thought I’d bagged a 30 knot run too… Unfortunately I give everyone hassle for getting track logs with their peak speeds so I thought I’d better double check and after soaking my GPS in a bowl of rice overnight to recover it showed a 29.45 knots best and a 10 second average of just under 29. Not bad for a 70 kilo runt in the coldest water the UK has to offer!
So Rocket did me proud for a season. Platform and foils are all where I wanted them to be, but rig development was sorely lacking and taking far too long with my brief periods in the boat. I’ve got some big plans for a new boat and wanted to make sure the old girl had a new home and ended up selling her in January to Andrew Blee up at Draycote. This made sure I could start getting the ball rolling with my silly boat plans, but with Me being Me this has taken ages, it’s April and I still only have a hull shell!
But this afternoon, a fairly major piece of the puzzle had started taking shape on my workshop floor, mostly thanks to Badger who lent his joinery skills for the morning (extra points for a Sunday!) and has given me the kick I need.
Parkstone is this weekend. Hoping to do it in a borrowed boat, then probably not sail again for a month while I finish mine. All good prep for my Eurocup campaign this season! Might just make Medemblik at this rate…

2013 has been an interesting season. After launching boat #1 10 months ago we’re now putting the bits on #13 which makes it one of our most successful seasons building wise. On the water was a different story with the boats taking a while to get the setup figured out and finding out that rig development had moved on without us! Top Rocketeer Dylan was unable to make the Nationals too which was a shame as he’s been training a lot in Weymouth and is consistently on the pace.
Personally had a few highlights, like the inlands at Bala which saw some of the most beautiful sailing the UK has to offer and was the first time the Rocket really started to show what she was made of. The Nationals was a great event and it was nice to get a few days of sailing in and make some progress, as it seems all of my sailing this year has been at events! Stone was another good one for me, as I was starting to mix it up with Rashley and Offer at times and had made some more setup gains.
It’s been a lean winter for me now having not sailed since Draycote where I got within a gnats whisker of cracking 30 knots and unfortunately the forestay snapped a bit later – the subsequent mess only just getting sorted out! My faithful steed is on her way to new owner Andrew Blee at Draycote next week and once a new boat for Dylan goes out the door I can get building and go nuts. Had a few ideas running around in my head for a while now and I’m going to commit the cardinal sin and put them all on one boat. Plan to be back on the water in March and aiming to do most of the Eurocup events over the summer.
On the product side, we’ve got some new larger span foils coming in for the bigger guys and potentially a slightly smaller set again as we’ve been playing around with a cut down version of the already quite small Rocket foils and they’ve shown some good promise.
Busy busy!

Okay, okay so I completely failed at blogging at the nationals. Truth is I was having a bit too much fun!
Castle Cove showed all 70 odd boats how to run a great Moth event, with all the volunteers putting in a huge effort making us feel welcome with bacon sarnies galore, the most massive bbq I’ve ever seen and some top notch racing to boot.
The Moth fleet over here has really come along in the last few years with the spread of abilities really tightening up. I think a lot of this is down to just how sailable the boats are now, letting people crack on and learn to race the boat rather than worrying about keeping it in the water! Reliability has also come on hugely, with big Friday seeing winds over 25 knots and barely any epoxy or grinding to be seen or heard.
I had a very mixed few days which started with a big lack of upwind abilities. I was really struggling to get any fullness out of my 16 upwind (plus side, downwinds we’re veeery fast!) and was losing up more than I was gaining down and with the top 30 all being capable Moth sailors meant it was a lot harder to get yourself back in the game.
The windy day went a lot better than I expected with no problems downwind, but my overpowered sail was really causing trouble leading me to get the saw out on my prodder overnight! Saturday saw me back on it a bit more with a bit more all round pace. I bought a used Raptor from Team Ireland (thanks Rory!) on Saturday night and rigged it up with Gio’s CST Elite3 and suddenly could go upwind again having my best result of the week in 7th. Unfortunately this followed with my worst race of the week where I couldn’t do anything right and had to wipe out avoiding traffic in the leeward gate.
So a real mixed bag. Loads of potential in the boat and always faster downhill than the boats I was around and after a couple of days of ‘tuning/biggest event of the year’ I was starting to get Rocket uphill too. If I’m going to continue with any delusions I may have of still being competitive I really need to get back on the rig development and maybe go sailing every now and again (having doubled my time on the water this year at the Nats!)
Final Results:

For a while my blogging was inversely proportional to my sailing time, choosing to spend time on the water. That’s gone out the window this year and my blogging is pretty much on par with my sailing time!
I worked out the other day that my Moth sailing hours are barely into double figures this year, and that includes the recent inlands at Bala which is pretty much the only event I’ve made it to! Thankfully it turned out to be a belter, with beautiful sunshine and awesome breezes on the Sunday. Rocket is proving to be a trusty companion for me, with plenty of pace and nice easy handling. While I ended up third in the event, it was a close run thing and my missing the start of race 4 (by half the beat!) cost me dearly. Badger is back on it, in his Rocket Powered M2 – slowly getting the hang of setting that up…
Rocket development is proceeding apace, with boats 5 and 6 in build at the moment. Gio and Dylan Fletcher are providing valuable tuning feedback and we’re slowly getting an understanding of how the boats like to be setup and they’re proving to be pretty quick at first launch now which is a good sign of how the setups are coming together.
Suffice to say I plan on being on the water at the Nationals in plenty of time for the starts, even if I don’t get any hours in beforehand! It’s shaping up to be a great event too, with nearly 40 boats entered within the first few days of registration and plenty of Euro folk heading over for the chance to win loads of cake by the sounds of it.
Sounds like my kind of event!

The RYA Dinghy Show will be this weekend at Alexandra Palace. Well worth a visit to see the latest in Moth Innovation along with the Exocet ;-p
We’ll be displaying Chris Rashleys new boat, along with the first Rocket and both Simon Maguire and I will be on hand all weekend to hopefully answer all your questions, as long as they don’t all consist of questions about the wand!
Hopefully see you all there!

So the Rocket finally took to the skies at Queen Mary yesterday. I’ll post a bit more in depth later on but I figured I ought to put something up for those poor people not on Facebook 😉 . Things went hitch free thankfully and I spend a good couple of hours blasting around trying to remember how to sail (not been in a boat since October) and starting to figure out what settings need tweaking.

You’ll have to forgive the ridiculously high boom, this was before I started playing with everything to get it all in the right place!

I’ve not sailed now since the Hayling open (which I failed to blog about as it sucked man balls) and as I’ve been boatless I was intrigued to see how fired I’d be when I finally got around to the thought of sailing again!

Suffice to say, I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. The build process for the Rocket has been a long one as I’ve been relying heavily on pulling favours for some major items (thanks Dave!) but as the end of it all approaches I’ve got a CnC’d hull blank and mould, a pretty awesome looking new mainfoil mould and a rudder mould landing any day. There’s a good stash of new thinking on this boat mostly based on my experience with the Ninja builds, I had a good blueprint in my head as to where I wanted to go with it all and a lot of it is the sort of thing you can only do with a fresh start – no ties to the past or backwards compatibility. I suppose all will be revealed and if you’ve been following my Facebook page you’ll probably have seen a few hints.

So, with my Fresh Start (TM) thinking in mind I’ve resigned from Cheddar. I’ll probably sail a couple of times there in the winter series but I suspect I’ll be doing most of my sailing from either Queen Mary or Weymouth – it’ll be a mission, but the competition is what I need to try to bring myself back up to scratch and give the Rocket it’s best chance. I’ve not been getting much use out of BCYC and there’s all sorts of behind the scenes nobbery with the committee running the place that’s forced other members out and it’s just not a great place to hang out.

Not sure what that means for the blog, but at least I still live near Bristol….

Ninja 3767 up for sale. She’s a 2010 Ninja that I’ve had back to fully pimp out. All the control systems are now current, current spec mast and a set of prototype cut down foils. I’ve been sailing the boat since Garda and she’s been going very well indeed.

In theory there is an unconventional boatbox which should be good for a trip across Europe. If you are overseas and looking for a boat I can arrange shipping. I’ll warranty the boat in the UK for 3 months, but would need to agree some terms for overseas buyers.

The first GP event of the new 2012/13 season kicked off over the weekend down at Weymouth. Foiltown put on it’s usual mix of conditions for us which resulted in one beautiful days sailing followed by something truly biblical which meant we only got one days sailing in.

Gareth Davies was Mr consistent over the 4 races on the Saturday, always making sure he was there or thereabouts leaving it to the rest of us to try to lose it, which we all succeeded in doing to some degree with failed tacks, missed mark roundings and all sorts of shenanigins. Tom Offer continued his good form with a 1,2,4 to take second. Special Agent Barton took third with a 2,3,3 and I took fourth with a 1,3,5. Overall results hereIt was a bit of a shame the turnout was so down, but it’s still pretty soon after Garda and a lot of people are between boats so I’ve got high hopes for the end of season event at HISC in a few weeks time. Helen and the folks at Castle Cove put on a great event for us and I reckon the Nationals here next year will be THE event to be at.

After seeing off Lord Shredder at Garda, my current steed is a 2 year old Ninja which I’ve been refurbishing and bringing up to current spec when I’ve had some spare time and is now fitted with a set of prototype Elite foils from a year or so ago which have been heavily modified since – The set up of which was a complete shot in the dark and was actually surprisingly good!

While none of the ropes were quite right, the toestraps started long and got progressively longer as the day went on and I ran out of rudder adjustment early on, the “Evil Midnight Bomber” put on a fine show and by the time I’d figured everything out she was going pretty quickly – taking the win in the last race by a good few hundred yards, despite massive cramp from the toestraps meaning my tacking had descended into ‘shove the tiller and pray’ rather than any meaningful technique! I’m planning on hanging onto the boat until after HISC open but she’ll be up for sale soon after to make way for the first of the Rockets.

Speaking of which, I’m posting on the Aardvark Facebook page as I’m going along with Rocket development so if you want to keep up to date with whats happening thats the place to do it.